How to make chicken broth in a simple way

A good, warm and nutritious broth is one of those dishes that should never be missing from the table when the temperatures begin to drop and we need to quickly comfort ourselves spoonful by spoonful. Made from vegetables, fish or seafood, chicken or beef bones or another type of meat, they are ideal at any time when the cold hits, and they are also perfect for repairing the body a little when we have a cold. Chicken is a classic with many nutritional benefits for our body.

It is also a super simple recipe to prepare and adapts very well—except for a few basic ones—to whatever you have in the refrigerator. If you’re in a hurry, you can prepare a broth in a jiffy in a slow cooker. For the chicken you will only need half an hour once it has started to boil and you see the steam coming out. If you have time, it is much better to do it over low heat, like almost everything in the kitchen, so that the flavors integrate without rushing. You will need about two or three hours to turn off the stove and have it ready.

In each house the chicken broth is made in a different way, with their personal touch. With more or less vegetables, with or without sautéing, only with carcasses to give it flavor or with thighs or thighs to later add the shredded chicken, with or without chickpeas (they give it an unmistakable taste), with these or other spices, leaving it lighter or thickening it by blending some of the vegetables we used for the broth.

In any case, the base is always the same: chicken carcass or meat, carrots, leek, celery, turnip, potato and parsnip. And the benefits it brings us, too. A good chicken broth helps us meet our daily needs for essential amino acids and zinc, which affects the health of our bone density and muscle mass. But they are not the only benefits for our health:

We are going to tell you how to make chicken broth in a simple way but with spectacular results. With a large pot, one of the five liters, you will have broth to repeat for two days if you are five or six people. If you prepare it for yourself, or for fewer guests, you will have more quantity and you can freeze a part if you wish to always have broth ready in the refrigerator.

Chicken broth recipe

We are going to need 1 sprig of celery (don’t use too much because it hides a lot of the other flavors), half a leek, a parsnip and a turnip, two or three carrots, a couple of small potatoes or a large one and an onion. We don’t need more vegetables.

As for meat, we can opt for a few chicken carcasses (three or four will be enough) and the same amount of chicken wings to give flavor to the broth. Or we can use other parts of the chicken such as thighs or thighs and then use their meat to add it to the soup or for other recipes, such as delicious chicken croquettes.

If you feel like it, you can also add a good handful of chickpeas. Keep in mind that you have to let them soak for at least twelve hours before making your broth. A trick is to put them inside a mesh so we can remove them from the broth and use the amount we want in each dish. Or even take them at another time.

The spices are to taste. But black pepper, cumin, a pinch of sweet paprika and turmeric work very well, which together with pepper has antioxidant effects and also gives a little color to the broth. Bay leaf is also almost never left over in this type of recipes.

Although there are people who do it, you can save yourself the sauce. All the natural ingredients are more than enough to give this chicken broth a very rich flavor. You also do not need to use concentrated pills of any type of flavor to enrich it.

To make our broth we only have to peel the vegetables and cut them into pieces large enough to be able to remove them later without any problem. Add the chicken, vegetables, chickpeas (optional), spices and bay leaf to the pot and cover with water.

Defat the broth

As the broth boils and the ingredients cook, you will see a brown foam forming on the surface. It’s normal. It is about the fat that the chicken releases. Since we want our broth to not be very fatty, what we will do is eliminate that foam with a spoon or slotted spoon until it stops forming because all the fat has already been expelled.

We will leave our broth to cook for a minimum of 2 hours. When it is ready, turn off the heat and let it cool a little. Then, we will strain the broth. We reserve the chickpeas, as well as the chicken if it has meat to later add to the consommé. If you want your broth to be a little thicker, you can beat the potato and some carrots with a little broth and add it again. It gives it more body.

When it comes to consuming it, we can do it in several ways. It is good to take it alone, with a little chicken and chickpeas, with some of its vegetables or cook a handful of noodles in that broth at the moment – there are gluten-free and gluten-free -, rice or quinoa. Another possibility is to accompany it with a diced boiled egg or poach an egg in the broth, which is very rich and creamy.